The thin line of ‘I had to’

By Herman M. Lagon

People like tidy labels. “Good people” on one side, “criminals” on the other, a thick wall between them, and a comforting belief that the wall is made of character. Then someone you know snaps in traffic after a sleepless week. A gentle neighbor throws a punch at a barangay fiesta when mocked one time too many. A quiet parent steals medicine because a child is wheezing and payday is three days away. A decent employee signs a shortcut document because everyone in the office says, “Ganito naman talaga.” That wall, it turns out, is thinner than we pretend. “Good” and “criminal” are not opposites in the strict sense; “good” is a shifting social judgment, while “criminal” is a legal status—someone violated a law, whether by malice, desperation, error, intoxication, panic, or a moment of reckless pride. The unsettling reality is that anyone can act irrationally, even committing heinous crimes, given the right circumstances. That does not excuse crime. It explains why the human mind sometimes misfires under heat.

A lot of our moral confidence comes from judging life in a “cool” state—fed, rested, safe, schooled, and not cornered. In that state, we write rules for the angry version of ourselves, the frightened version, the humiliated version, the grieving version. Behavioral science calls this the hot–cold empathy gap: when calm, we underestimate how hunger, fear, pain, craving, ignorance, or rage can hijack judgment; when “hot,” we overestimate how permanent that hot logic is (Loewenstein, 2005). This is why someone can swear they would never hit anyone, then do it after a night of zero sleep and a morning of insults. It explains how a patient preacher can still erupt when a loved one is threatened. The gap is not sin; it is human wiring. We prefer the myth of consistency to the truth of fragility.

 

Add chemistry to the mix and the line gets blurrier. Alcohol does not automatically turn people violent, but the research is clear that intoxication can increase aggression risk, depending on the person and the environment (Sontate & Kamaluddin, 2021). It narrows attention, dulls inhibition, and makes “I will just walk away” harder to access when pride is stung. Anyone who has taught a late afternoon class knows what fatigue does to patience; now multiply that by liquor, or by drugs, or by the panic of a fight that feels like survival. None of that erases responsibility. It simply explains why “I did not plan this” can be both true and useless in court. The harm is still harm. The victims still carry it. But if we want fewer victims, we need to understand the cocktail that breeds violence: substance, setting, ego, lust, exclusion, disgrace, and an exit door that closes.

Sometimes no substance is needed—only exhaustion. There is a reason sleep deprivation has become a quiet public health issue, not a lifestyle badge. Studies link insufficient sleep to poorer self-regulation, increased impulsivity, and weakened ethical decision-making (Agyapong-Opoku et al., 2025; Barnes & Watson, 2019, as reviewed). In the life of a teacher, this is painfully familiar: exam week, grading week, meetings piled on top of meetings, then a family concern at home. You can be a principled person at 7:20 a.m. and a reckless one by 10:00 p.m. if your brain is running on fumes. We treat sleep like a reward for good people, when it is really a guardrail that keeps good people from becoming dangerous people. Hungry brains do something similar. Evidence from “hangry” research suggests low energy states can make irritability and aggression more likely, especially when people interpret their discomfort as someone else’s fault (Swami et al., 2022). A person can still choose. But the choice gets harder when the body is screaming.

Then there is the most morally confusing trigger of all: loved ones. Many of the stories that split communities are not the cartoonish crimes of greed, but the messy ones—fathers who lash out when they think a child is in danger, siblings who “teach a lesson” to someone who disrespected their mother, spouses who retaliate after betrayal. This is where our non-negotiables—family, reputation, faith, pride—can become the very lever that moves us toward wrongdoing. People often say their values are non-negotiable, until ego or identity is put on the line. Many offenses begin there. Self-defense is not as wide as social media suggests; the law looks at necessity and unlawful attack, not fear alone. The gap between fear and legality is where tragedies multiply.

This is where “crime opportunity” thinking becomes useful—not to cheapen morality, but to sober it up. Opportunity theory and routine activity theory argue that crime tends to occur when a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians converge in time and space (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Notice what that framing does: it does not assume offenders are always monsters. It assumes situations matter. A tired teacher who would never steal in daylight might “borrow” school supplies when nobody is watching because “everyone does it” and the risk feels low. A bored teen might vandalize when the barangay lights are busted and no adults are around. A driver might beat someone up if there is an audience cheering, no police visible, and a phone camera ready to make him “viral.” The theory can sound cold, but it is practical: change the setting, and you reduce harm. That is why situational crime prevention focuses on making wrongdoing harder, riskier, and less rewarding, rather than pretending everyone will suddenly become noble (Clarke, 1997).

What still chills is how ordinary people can do terrible harm once authority signals it is acceptable. Milgram’s work is contested, yet its warning endures: many will obey even when it hurts others (Milgram, 1963). That discomfort is the point. It should. It suggests that “I am a good person” is not a guarantee against wrongdoing when a uniform, a title, or a crowd makes cruelty feel official. In local terms, this is the office culture that normalizes “pirma na lang,” the classroom culture that excuses humiliation as “discipline,” the community culture that tolerates corruption as “normal lang ni.” People do not always become criminals because they love crime. Sometimes they become criminals because they are trained, nudged, and rewarded until conscience is tired.

Of course, we must be careful with empathy. Empathy is not a pardon. Explaining crime does not erase its damage. Harm remains harm. Knowing the mind of a thief does not return what was stolen, and understanding an abuser’s rage does not heal a child. This is not about sympathy without limits. It is about justice that holds people accountable while still studying the pressures, systems, and failures that allow harm to happen. A teacher does this instinctively: discipline the student who cheated, yes, but also ask why cheating felt necessary, and how the classroom incentives might be pushing the weak toward shortcuts.

There is a simple reflective habit I learned from disciplined educators and decent leaders: pause, replay the day, and notice what pulled you toward clarity versus what pulled you toward agitation. Not in a performative way, not for social media, but as private honesty. You do not need to name it religiously. It is just a habit of attention—catching the moment you become “hot,” naming what is happening inside, and deciding whether you want to be the person who reacts or the person who chooses. That habit does not make anyone immune to crime, but it reduces the chance that exhaustion, envy, or wounded pride will drive the steering wheel. In schools, we teach students to “think before you click.” Adults need the grown-up version: think before you justify. The most dangerous sentence in the human mind is not “I am angry.” It is “I am right.”

For many teachers, this theme is painfully relevant because you stand at the intersection of stress and ethics every week. You handle grades that can break scholarship dreams. You manage students who test patience at the exact moment your own child is sick at home. You receive messages late at night, and you are expected to respond with saintly calm. Under those pressures, it becomes easier to understand how people slide: how a small lie becomes a habit, how a “one-time” shortcut becomes a lifestyle, how a person begins to believe the rules are for other people. You also see the opposite: students who commit small offenses, then return, ashamed, and ready to be guided. That is why labeling someone permanently as “criminal” can be both legally correct and humanly lazy. People change. Some do not, but many do. The label should protect society, not cancel the possibility of repair.

If this insight has a thesis, it is simple and slightly unsettling: character matters, but conditions matter too. Let us stop pretending that only “bad people” break laws. That belief blinds us to the pressures that push ordinary people to bad choices—hunger, shame, anger, exhaustion, pride, or weak systems. Change the situation and behavior often changes too. We judge from calm places, forgetting what fear and pressure can do to the mind. The wiser ground is firm justice, honest evidence, and humility—because the real danger is how close ordinary lives can come to the edge.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.